Gareth Blackstock would be envious
Most people I meet who teach English are in their early 20s. Some have lived alone (maybe in college), and some never let go of mommy's apron strings until they arrive here.
Few of those who come here know how how to cook. Back in Canada, they ate instant noodles and microwave pizza. In Korea, they end up eating ramyeon (instant noodles), kimbap (a Korean imitation of sushi) and microwaved pizza. Pardon my ego, but I am going to put an stop to that.
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The Weapons Of A Well-Armed Cook K's Collection of Culinary Creations and Concoctions Cookbooks and Other Resources |
Here's a photo of me cooking in my apartment
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For those who don't know how to cook but want to, or those who don't want to eat (or can't eat) Korean food, this page is for you. (Korean food makes me vomit - literally, not figuratively. There is nothing locally grown that doesn't make me physically ill.)
This started as a starter kit for those just getting started as cook.
I then included a few basic recipes of my own to add to the mix. I
then topped it off with a sprinkling of other resources, such as a
freeware cookbook downloaded from the Ziff-Davis website (it is in the
Windows HLP file format). For the aforementioned "college cooks", the
"Vending Machine Cuisine" will bring back memories. (For me,
it brings back my breakfast!)
The Weapons Of A Well-Armed Cook
To cook properly, you don't need a hundred hooks on a wall and a
different utensil on each. You can cook just about anything with
only nine items in your kitchen:
The pan will run you 10,000-20,000 depending on the quality,
and the rest can be purchased for 2,000-6,000 won each, all
for less than 50,000 won and they will last you for a year.
(I would recommend a cast iron pan rather than stainless,
but they are not sold in Korea.) And I would definitely
recommend you bring a can opener with you from Canada. Aside
from those sold in Carrefour which are French made,
can openers for sale in Korea are junk.
A cutting board is essential because the counters in Korean
apartments are often not the best (Do you really want paint
flakes in your food?) nor is cutting directly on a table
a great idea. Plus, you can lift the board and use it to
dump food into a pan. Thin flexible plastic boards cost as
little as 2000 won (C$2.40).
Why is a wooden spoon better? Because wood doesn't melt when
left in a pan of boiling food, and the wood won't conduct heat
and burn your hand when you grab it! (Duh!)
There are some other things that make cooking easier and I would
recommend, but you can live without them. They are either more
expensive, are not needed if you don't buy certain foods, or can
be substituted for with one of the items listed above:
Small ovens on a low temperature can reheat or thaw frozen food
just as well as a microwave, even if it does take longer. Anyway,
how do you toast bread in a microwave? Toaster ovens are available
in many department stores for 20,000-50,000 won.
For the more ambitious like myself who can bake bread, cookies,
cakes, pastries, or roast meat and whole birds, an oven with a
timer and temperature guage is a necessity. Unfortunately, finding
ovens like these is difficult, but they do exist and will run you
50,000-100,000 won. (The ovens I am speaking of are the size of
microwave ovens. Larger ovens can be purchased, but they are the
size of stoves and cost upwards of 250,000 won.)
A second pan is essential if you are going to cook more than one
thing at a time (eg. pasta and sauce), or boil vegetables.
A small blender can be useful for chopping meat, vegetables
or fruit quickly. (Have you never made your own smoothies?)
For those like me who live on coffee, brewing at home is a must.
Starbucks in Korea is worse than in Canada but just as
expensive, and the many "coffee and hof (beer)"
establishments in Korea serve instant coffee. (It's
instant, but it ain't coffee!) With rare exceptions, the
best cup of coffee you will get in Korea is at home.
A bread knife is needed only if you buy real bread from the few
places that sell it. If you think "Wonder" is real bread,
then just buy the "bread" in Korean bakeries and you will do fine.
For those who prefer real, solid, heavy breads (think Buns
Master) there are places you can find it.
Finally, a grater is handy for chopping fruits and vegetables into
recipes and salads. If you don't want to buy it and are adept
with a carving knife, you can do the job just as well by hand.
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For all the talk about Korean food being healthy and fat free, most westerners I know end up leaving Korea fatter than when they arrived. Don't let your waist go to waste just because you want to eat western instead of Korean. Many who tried a midnight run lost their physical health first (through excessive drinking and junk food) before losing their mental health.
This is not meant to be a be-all-and-end-all of cooking nor is it an entire diet to live on. It is meant to be a starting point, to show you that cooking is easy. Kitchens aren't booby-trapped and won't blow up if you touch anything...unless, of course, you do something dumb like leave the gas on and light a cigarette.
Get stuck in and cook! Except for undercooked meat and eggs, nothing you can try will kill you.
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Ingredients: (makes 2-4 servings)
Korean brands of hotcake mixes have slightly different recipes, but adding eggs and either water or milk. Follow the recipe on the container and prepare the mix. Because most Korean apartments have gas, the heat is higher than electric. To prevent hotcakes from burning, use extra milk to make the mix slightly runny. On your griddle or frying pan, use a small amount of vegetable oil and and turn it to a medium heat. (Butter is not suitable for pancakes, soy oil burns, and olive oil burns very quickly plus it tastes terrible when you fry food in it.) The pan is hot enough when you can throw in a drop of water and it bounces. Pour the pancake mix in until it is about 10-12cm in diameter (slightly bigger than your palm). When the top of the pancake is no longer runny, it is ready to flip. If you smell the pancake catching in the pan, flip it now even if it still runny. Turn down the heat slightly. You should be able to make a pile of pancakes like this. They will store in the refridgerator for a day, so if you make extra, save them for dinner, a snack, or breakfast the next day. Serve them hot with maple syrup, fruit, and maybe whipped cream. Squirt on lemon juice and sugar if you can't find syrup in the stores. Enjoy. |
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Ingredients: (makes 1 serving)
Break the eggs into a bowl, careful to remove any pieces of shell that might have fallen in. Add in whatever other ingredients you like and stir. In your pan, melt a small amount of butter over a low to medium heat. (Do NOT use Korean margarine! It is even worse than North American margarine and burns within a minute on any heat! It also tastes terrible!) Pour the bowl into the pan and cook slowly, scraping the edges. When the top appears to be solidifying, work the spatula under the edge and flip the omelette. (If it breaks, who cares? It all goes down the same way and tastes just as good.) Serve it with toast and some coffee, and you can take on the world. |
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Ingredients:
In a large bowl, break some eggs, about one egg for every 2-3 pieces of bread. Put your skillet on a medium heat with a little butter. Dip a piece of bread in the eggs and coat both sides. Place it into the frying pan and cook until the egg is solid on both sides. (Yes, you do flip the thing.) Do this to each piece of bread, adding more butter as necessary. As with pancakes, eat them now or store the extras in the fridge for up to a day to reheat and eat. Serve it with fruit and sprinkle some icing sugar on top. You can't find icing sugar in the stores? Just grind some granulated sugar (what you use in coffee and tea) in your blender for 10-15 seconds! |
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I include this recipe because salsas for sale in Korea are either medium or hot. When it comes to spiciness, Koreans have no concept of the word "mild".
Ingredients:
Store in the fridge up to a week in a closed container. If you serve it for a party, give it a few minutes to warm up. Serve it with corn or tortilla chips which are for sale in many places, or with tortillas in a mexican dish. |
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Ingredients: (makes 1 serving)
Peel and chop the potatoes into 2cm�2cm�2cm cubes or thereabouts. Boil them in water until you can poke a fork into them easily. (If you boil them too long, they turn to mush.) Boiling potatoes is like melting ice: the smaller the pieces, the faster they melt (or cook, as the case may be). Once cooked, drain thoroughly and add a splash of milk. If you have a potato masher, go crazy. If you don't have one, a well made bamboo cooking spoon will crush them against the side of the pan just as well. Mix the potatoes and milk as you mash, and add a little butter too or save the butter to put on the plate.
Extra ingredients for potato salad:
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This is a basic recipe for cooking Korean rice, which is a very different rice from what is grown in North America. Personally, I prefer Indian Basmati rice.
Ingredients: (makes 2-4 servings)
Pour the rice into a cooking pot. Fill the pot nearly to the brim with cold water, then pour the water out. The rice will remain at the bottom of the pot. Repeat this process 4 or 5 times, or until the water seems quite clear. Rinsing the rice in this manner eliminates any excess starch. Cover the rice with 2 cups water and let it stand for 30 minutes. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and steam for 20 minutes or until dry. (From: The Korean Cookbook, By Judy Hyun) |
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Ingredients:
What's Italian for Bon appetit...? |
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Ingredients:
Cook the sauce and beef as per the packet recipe. Serve on a table, picking and choosing the ingredients as you go. Nice for a lazy Sunday or a group of friends. |
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Ingredients: (makes 3-5 servings)
Finely chop the vegetables (a grater works much faster) and mix them in a large bowl with about 200ml of salad dressing. If you use mayonnaise instead of a seasoned salad dressing, add something like as a pinch of a vegetable boullion cube to give it a little "kick". Stir and store in the fridge for up to a few days. It makes an easy and good summer side dish, served with a piece of meat and a potato. |
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Ingredients:
And whatever else you can find that looks good as finger food, even cooked jumbo shrimp on toothpicks. For anything large like carrots and cucumber, chop them into sticks. Put everything on a tray or in a closed container in the fridge until ready for use. For a vegetable dip, you can choose one of two options. (You can find dip on the black market or in import shops, but I would not buy them because they can spoil easily. These are safer.)
This is not just good for parties! Instead of making salad everyday or eating junk for a snack, reach into the fridge for this when you are hungry, it will keep for a week. |
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Ingredients: (makes 3-5 servings)
Dice the onion and mix the ingredients into a large covered pan and simmer over a low heat for about 30-40 minutes, adding water if it is drying out (you can hear crackling or the bottom of the pan looks dry when you stir it). Serve it while it is hot, or store it in the fridge up to two days. Add or remove the ingredients you do or don't like. Varying the recipe will also make eating it often not as boring. Vegetarians I know like the recipe. The only knock with a veggie option is that without the meat, the chili tends to be watery and not so heavy. |
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Ingredients: (makes 2-3 servings)
Cook the carrot and potato with some water in a skillet until tender. Add the curry powder or block to the pan and give it a few minutes to dissolve. Add the onion, the meat, lentils or any other ingredients. Simmer together on a low heat for 10-20 minutes, stirring constantly until the curry thickens. Serve it with cooked rice, nan bread or pappadums. Yums. |
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Ingredients: (makes 4-6 servings)
Boil some of the water and cook the vegetables after chopping them
into small pieces. (They are cooked when you can easily pierce
them with a fork.) If you add them to water in this order, they
will finish cooking at roughly the same time:
The vegetables listed are suggestions not requirements. Add or remove things that tickle your fancy. (I sometimes add frozen peas or corn to the mix.) Cut up the canned tomatoes beforehand if they are whole. (Do not drain them!) After cooking, mix the remaining vegetable ingredients, the boullion cubes, and the meat (if used) then slowly simmer on a low heat for 15-30 minutes. Then add in the rice or pasta and simmer for five more minutes. (Do not overcook the rice or pasta! It will turn to mush!) Serve it with bread or salad for a light meal. This recipe takes practice, trial and error. I still sometimes end up with inedible soups, though they are usually good. The recipe as I have written it is quite large and makes 4-6 meals' worth. If you want a smaller size, minimize the ingredients. |
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Ingredients: (makes 3-4 servings)
In a large pan, pour in the tomatoes (and sauce if used), the seasonings, and add the beef, onions and/or peppers. If you are using canned tomatoes, drain them before adding to the sauce or it will become runny. Simmer on low to medium heat for close to an hour to ensure the meat cooks thoroughly and falls apart in the sauce. Add a little olive oil for flavouring. (Ground beef is a 20th century idea and bolognaise is a recipe going back to the Rennaisance. Real Italians - at least, my neighbors who taught me how to cook - don't use hamburger in their recipes.) To cook pasta properly, fill a pan half way with water and add a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Once boiling, add the pasta to the water and make sure it softens and is entirely in the water as quickly as possible. There is only one accurate way to tell if pasta is cooked properly, or al dente: lift some of the pasta out of the boiling water and squeeze it between your fingers. It hurts, but it's the best way. The instant you can squeeze completely through the pasta, it is done. (I don't mean you put your hands into the boiling water, you ninny! Use your cooking tongs to lift some onto a plate!) Mediterranean pasta when cooked properly remains golden in colour and firm to the touch. If it is swollen like a bunch of white worms, such as they serve at Pizza Hut, it is ruined. Additionally, pasta made with Mediterranean wheat is the only pasta that maintains its golden colour and firmness when cooked. Canadian wheat makes a great bread, but it makes a terrible pasta. (Okay, use ground beef if you have to....) |
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Ingredients:
Cover the container and place it in an oven at 170�C for about 40 minutes. If you don't have an oven, place a metal grill over your gas element and put the tray on it, cooking on a low to medium heat for 40 minutes. For a sauce, take half a packet of instant soup mix, add a few teaspoons of lemon juice, and about a � cup of water, stirring with a fork. If you have a metal bowl, put the sauce on the element next to the fish a few minutes before it is finished. Serve the fish on plates with the sauce on the side. With mashed or baked potatoes and boiled vegetables alongside, you will impress anybody. |
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Ingredients:
Want an instant recipe to impress the girls/boys, to cook while one is watching, or for yourself when you have no inclination to cook? This one is dead easy. Boil chicken. Drain water. Add tomatoes. Add seasoning. Cook on low heat. Cook pasta. Drain. Serve on plate. Sprinkle parmesan. With some precooked chicken in the fridge, you can do this in 10 minutes, and it tastes almost the same as Earl's chicken breast with pasta. You can also buy bottles of "marinara" sauces in most stores and substitute them for the tomatoes and seasonings. |
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Ingredients:
Too damned tired to cook after six hours of screaming kids? Here's a healthy meal in a bowl, made in three minutes. Boil some shrimp, vegetables and half of a boullion cube in water for three minutes. (Bagged frozen vegetables sold in Korea are precooked.) If you want rice, put the unopened bowl into a different pot of boiling water at the same time or open it slightly and microwave it for 30-60 seconds. If you want noodles, add the nests to the boiling water after the shrimp and veggies have been boiling for one minute. Once boiled for three minutes in total, drain slightly (keep a little of the water) and dump everything into a big bowl and eat, adding soy or Worcestire sauce for flavour. It's not fancy, but it's easy and healthy. If you want fish (or chicken) instead of shrimp, boil it an extra 5-8 minutes (20 minutes) to cook it, then add the vegetables and noodles. |
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Patbingsu, a dessert, is the lone Korean recipe you will find on this page. It is actually not unique to Korea, I have seen it in Thailand and the Philippines, and read about variants in other countries. It's damn good on a hot day and is a healthy snack. You could even eat it for dinner! (Burger King's patbingsu is the best among fast food joints that serve it.)
Ingredients:
Put a small amount of shaved ice in the bottom of a bowl. Pour a circle of sweet red beans around the perimeter, then pour in the cream if you are using it. Then put fruit cocktail in the center and top it off with soft ice cream or whipped cream, and maybe some maraschino cherries. Delightful! |
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Like I asked, have you ever made your own smoothies? If not, it's time to get cracking. It's dead easy and makes a hot and humid day more bearable.
Ingredients:
Put all the ingredients in the blender. Grind for 30-60 seconds or until they are smooth (hence the name). Ta da. If your blender is small, halve the ingredients. |
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Ingredients:
I mentioned them, so I figure I should say how to make them.
The messy way: Scrape them into a flat container and pat them down. Put them in the fridge until their are firm. Cut and enjoy.
The not-as-messy way: Becase the paste is liquid at room temperature whereas marshmallows are solid, you must keep them cold or they will fall apart. |
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Ingredients:
Add the ingredients together in a pan and be sure to get rid of any lumps before cooking. On a low to medium heat, stir slowly but constantly until it thickens like pudding. (Don't be impatient! The milk will burn if you use a high heat.) Custard is a good all purpose replacement for ice cream except that it is hot. Pour it over cake, pie, cookies, fruit, or just about anything. Custard powder is nothing more than corn starch and food colouring, so except for the fat in the milk (try using skim milk instead of whole) custard is a fat-free and healthy dessert. |
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Ingredients:
Here is a dessert that takes no time but tastes damn good on a cold night. In a pan over a low heat, mix the ingredients and stir regularly until it begins to thicken. Serve with a little extra milk, fruit sauce, or jam poured on top. |
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Ingredients:
Trifle can be served immediately, or stored in the fridge until ready. If the fruit cocktail makes the cake soggy, it is an expected part of this dessert. (Yum!) Serve in individual dishes and, if desired, pour whipped cream over the top (spray bottles are available in many import stores) and place a few cherries on top. (Use some of the syrup from the cherry jar as a glace!) If you are thinking "Fat City!", remember that only the small amount of sponge cake at the bottom (and the whipped cream, if used) have any fat. This dessert is very sweet, but slimming too. |
Cookbooks and Other Resources
Below is a collection of recipes and resources on cooking for people heading to Korea. Don't be afraid to try a recipe, it's a good way to learn how to cook.
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Savory Market's Free PDF recipe books
A collection of free PDF files for downloading featuring an entire libraries' worth of recipes.
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Carolina Country Cooking - free cookbooks in PDF
Again, this site has free cookbooks for downloading. Try some!
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Creative Homemaking free e-booklet recipes
The page has an assortment of recipes in individual files.
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Gordon's Bachelor Cooking Index
As the title suggests, this is for the single cook because too many spoil the broth.
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Vegetarian recipes from All Recipes.com
For those who don't mete out meat, meet this site and it's flesh-free recipes.
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Vegetarian Bachelor Cooking
Here is another collection of quick and easy recipes for the bachelor vegetarian cook.
- The ZiffNet Cookbook: Recipes From The Digital Diner
(It can be downloaded from my site.)This is a free cookbook formatted as a Windows help file. The recipes are okay, and the format means it is searchable for types of recipes and ingredients. Be sure to view the "Vending Machine Cuisine" section.
For people with a sense of humour:
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Beer Lover Hidden Fridge Cam Bachelor Cooking 101
- Everything Goes with Beer!For those who can't cook and don't care who knows it, this site will tell the culinary challenged how to bake and barbeque.
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The Principles of Bachelor Cooking (this page is on my site)
This page is a riot. No, I didn't write it, that's why it's funny.
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